Electronic / Experimental
4136 products
Often credited as the father of multi-media theatre, Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) took complete creative control over his productions - including cutting-edge approaches to lighting and costume that transformed human bodies into shifting sculptural shapes, while also composing wildly innovative electronic music as accompaniment. After initially experimenting with musique concrète and tape manipulation (as demonstrated on the 1959 LP Choreosonic Music of the New Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais) Nikolais became the first owner of Robert Moog's synthesizer at the Audio Engineering Society convention in New York in late 1964. Relying heavily on the Moog and later the Synclavier synth/sampler, these 21 tracks document Nikolais' highly-prescient compositions across the mid 1960s through to the late 1980s - existing not only as extensions of his other-worldly choreographic pieces, but standalone pieces of foundational mid-century American electronic and experimental music.
Keith Freund’s music occupies a space where careful musicianship and homebrewed experimentation meet and shake hands. On “Window Left Open,” spacious melodies drift through dense fields of electronic activity: saxophone lines rise above buzzing circuitry, percussion flickers at the edges of the frame, and clustered glitch textures dart through the music like insects in tall summer grass. Every sound feels vividly animated, a charged part of the same mercurial ecosystem. Freund’s talent lies in balancing warmth and unpredictability with remarkable ease. Patient motifs recall the exploratory spirit of early folktronica, while bit-reduced textures, degraded loops, and idiosyncratic synthesis techniques continually reshape the terrain beneath them. Rather than treating acoustic and electronic elements as opposing forces, Freund allows them to intermingle until distinctions dissolve, creating compositions that reward close listening while retaining immediate warmth. This record finds Freund working with a fully formed vocabulary that is truly his own, transforming glitch, melody, improvisation, and atmosphere into songs that are both fundamentally curious and disarmingly engaging.
Editions Mego welcomes KMRU back to the fold. Kin is Nairobi born, Berlin based, sonic wizard Joseph Kamaru’s second release on Editions Mego, following on from the classic 2020 release Peel. Since the release and subsequent praise for Peel, the artist has been a staple on the electronic scene performing on numerous stages and festivals worldwide in tandem with a flood of media recognition. Kin could be construed as the second child following Peel. The project came out of initial discussions with Peter Rehberg about what a Peel sequel would sound like. Kamaru is quick to clarify that Kin is not that record; “I'll know when that record will come and when I'll make it. It's already happening... or maybe it lives within both of these Mego records”.
It is this deft ambiguity and vague tiptoeing around the concrete that encapsulates the ambiguous sound world of Kamaru’s vision.
Kin was started early 2021 in Nairobi with Kamaru exploring his noisier palette of sounds encompassing distortions reminiscent of the sounds he would muster from in his youth when playing guitar. He paused making this record for a year as soon as Peter died, then slowly returned to it through 2022 resulting in the immense new work we have here.
The charms within Kin lay as Easter eggs revealing the true identity behind the colourful sonics only after multiple deep listens. With Trees Where We Can See sets the tone by way of a warm swaying melody inviting the listener in for further investigation. In 2022 KMRU and Mego stalwart Fennesz toured the USA together resulting in a strong friendship and also, the second track here, Blurred. A neat Mego/Editions Mego loop as such. Blurred arranges twangy guitar strums alongside glistening glaciers of shimmering drones. They Are Here represents a darker hue as melancholic clouds of shadowy noir tap directly into the listener's nerve stream. Maybe takes a detour into a bristling euphoric electronic storm whilst We Are screeches in a pattern formation not unlike a highly abstracted Aphex Twin forcing its way out of a hard drive. By Absence concludes proceedings, operating as both exit music and a portal to further sonic investigation with acoustic bellowing residing amongst a kaleidoscopic backdrop.
Kin is a trip that rewards close repeated listens as all the colours and textures, nuance and narratives unveil themselves. This isn’t a record to be glossed over, magic rewards concentration.
Kin is a record to be Played slow and LOUD.
For Pita.
Editions Mego welcomes KMRU back to the fold. Kin is Nairobi born, Berlin based, sonic wizard Joseph Kamaru’s second release on Editions Mego, following on from the classic 2020 release Peel. Since the release and subsequent praise for Peel, the artist has been a staple on the electronic scene performing on numerous stages and festivals worldwide in tandem with a flood of media recognition. Kin could be construed as the second child following Peel. The project came out of initial discussions with Peter Rehberg about what a Peel sequel would sound like. Kamaru is quick to clarify that Kin is not that record; “I'll know when that record will come and when I'll make it. It's already happening... or maybe it lives within both of these Mego records”.
It is this deft ambiguity and vague tiptoeing around the concrete that encapsulates the ambiguous sound world of Kamaru’s vision.
Kin was started early 2021 in Nairobi with Kamaru exploring his noisier palette of sounds encompassing distortions reminiscent of the sounds he would muster from in his youth when playing guitar. He paused making this record for a year as soon as Peter died, then slowly returned to it through 2022 resulting in the immense new work we have here.
The charms within Kin lay as Easter eggs revealing the true identity behind the colourful sonics only after multiple deep listens. With Trees Where We Can See sets the tone by way of a warm swaying melody inviting the listener in for further investigation. In 2022 KMRU and Mego stalwart Fennesz toured the USA together resulting in a strong friendship and also, the second track here, Blurred. A neat Mego/Editions Mego loop as such. Blurred arranges twangy guitar strums alongside glistening glaciers of shimmering drones. They Are Here represents a darker hue as melancholic clouds of shadowy noir tap directly into the listener's nerve stream. Maybe takes a detour into a bristling euphoric electronic storm whilst We Are screeches in a pattern formation not unlike a highly abstracted Aphex Twin forcing its way out of a hard drive. By Absence concludes proceedings, operating as both exit music and a portal to further sonic investigation with acoustic bellowing residing amongst a kaleidoscopic backdrop.
Kin is a trip that rewards close repeated listens as all the colours and textures, nuance and narratives unveil themselves. This isn’t a record to be glossed over, magic rewards concentration.
Kin is a record to be Played slow and LOUD.
For Pita.
Solo, duo, orchestra. An extraordinary sonic spectacle exploring acoustic phenomena through three forms of performance. In early summer 2025, a collective sonic experiment took place deep within the vast reverberant space beneath the body of Uchinokura Dam, surrounded by the mountains of Shibata, Niigata, Japan. Led by two singular artists who continually transcend the boundaries of their respective practices—Otomo Yoshihide, whose work traverses diverse musical worlds, and Ami Yamasaki, a voice and visual artist whose practice extends beyond the conventions of voice into the realm of physical expression—the experiment unfolded across three distinct forms of performance. The album comprises solo performances by Otomo and Yamasaki, each engaging in a dialogue with the space; a duo in which voice and guitar set off a chain of musical responses; and Uchinokura Dam Orchestra, an ensemble of 45 participants recruited through an open call, transforming beyond their individual intentions into a single, immense living organism. Voices, breath, bodies, water, instruments, sound objects, and every kind of incidental noise are transformed by the unique acoustic properties of the space from the very moment they are set in motion. Through unpredictable reactions and interactions, these sounds develop into vast, surging waves of resonance. An unprecedented experimental document capturing the emergence, interference, amplification, and transformation of acoustic phenomena within a single space.
Dawning is a collaboration between Chicago creative music mainstay Damon Locks and burgeoning Black chamber music collective D-Composed, featuring violinists Khelsey Zarraga and Anya Brumfield, violist Seth Pae, and cellist Lindsey Sharpe. The album was recorded live in the auditorium of The Land School, Rebuild Foundation’s headquarters in a reconstituted former elementary school on Chicago’s south side, where D-Composed & International Anthem have been creative partners-in-residence since its opening in 2025. The album’s sonic palette pairs Locks’ live sampling, beat knowledge, and spoken word swagger with D-Composed’s uniquely improvisational take on the string quartet.
The Land School itself is the result of a massive undertaking by Rebuild Foundation and its founder, artist Theaster Gates, who for the last couple decades have transformed disused spaces into “sites of creative production, artistic experimentation, radical hospitality, archival stewardship and land cultivation.” At The Land School, public programming produced by creative partners-in-residence supports Rebuild's mission to expand proximity and access to cultural production on the South Side of Chicago. “What began as a reflection on our relationship to the land became a sonic experiment reflecting blackness in the present moment through hope, rage, protest, and resistance,” says Locks and Zarraga in the album’s co-written liner notes.
What we hear on Dawning is what Locks and D-Composed brought to the auditorium on April 11, 2026: a live performance meant to be “a sound experience that pulls you in and wrings you out.” The recorded document is hard to argue with. From sublime and consonant downbeat grooves to genuinely frightening, dissonant and anxious meltdowns—the six pieces that make up the album cover so much musical ground with such an expert touch that it can be difficult to remember that we’re listening to something that occurred all at once in the same room.
This is in spite of the fact that the album begins with a solitary cello calling out against only the sounds of the fully occupied room itself: gentle shuffling and small breaths, settling across the stereo spectrum of the opening track “Dawning (On Us)”—a slowly building theme augmented by Locks’ samples of previous D-Composed performances announces the musicians’ arrival in dramatic fashion.
Dialing the tension back, a looped 2-bar slow jam guides the listener into “We Stay Beginning,” the first vocal-forward piece on the album. Locks’ skills as a mic controller are on full display here in a similar way to his 2024 spoken beat masterpiece List of Demands, though here the performance is much further out, deconstructed dub-style à la his contributions to Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra.
"We stay in full bloooom!"
“Reflecting (On Us),” on the other hand, is unlike anything else in Locks’ sonic registry, and it’s here that the freshly tilled land of this collaboration yields its unique fruit. The track is a powerful showcase of the strings of D-Composed, and undoubtedly the centerpiece of the album. A dark and ennui-filled solo cello starts this ominous piece, followed by an ascendant droning intensity building as the remaining members of the ensemble enter. The surface noise crackles from Locks’ rig feel like actual flames atop a repeating heartbeat pulse. Loopers are playing and players are looping—it’s difficult to tell what is a live moment and what is a sample. Except that it’s all a live moment: even the samples are being blasted through the PA, gently reverberating in the early spring air on Dorchester Avenue, just outside of the building walls. The apex of dissonance hits as the lone human voice echoes in a repeating sampled phrase:
"It was though I stepped into a strange city—a city from which all people had fled"
The album closer, “Don’t Recede,” sends us off with a straightforward message of resilience. The tune’s nascent scraping and droning dissonance is reframed as a consonant experience almost immediately when the voice of singer Monique Golding, Locks’ longtime comrade in Black Monument Ensemble, enters. “Don’t bend to the noise” she sings, quietly understated, as the sound of the string ensemble is bolstered by Lock’s mysterious and percussive sampler work.
It’s the perfect summation of an afternoon of live performance—an exercise in contemplative, disjointed positivity, related to us here as a recorded document of an actual moment shared by a group of people in an intentionally purposed room. The spirit of the endeavor seems to suggest that the feeling of unity in that moment can radiate outward, transforming all it touches: a room, a neighborhood, a city, state, a country, a planet, a solar system, a universe.
"And seek wisdom, to make wise decisions"
Dawning is a collaboration between Chicago creative music mainstay Damon Locks and burgeoning Black chamber music collective D-Composed, featuring violinists Khelsey Zarraga and Anya Brumfield, violist Seth Pae, and cellist Lindsey Sharpe. The album was recorded live in the auditorium of The Land School, Rebuild Foundation’s headquarters in a reconstituted former elementary school on Chicago’s south side, where D-Composed & International Anthem have been creative partners-in-residence since its opening in 2025. The album’s sonic palette pairs Locks’ live sampling, beat knowledge, and spoken word swagger with D-Composed’s uniquely improvisational take on the string quartet.
The Land School itself is the result of a massive undertaking by Rebuild Foundation and its founder, artist Theaster Gates, who for the last couple decades have transformed disused spaces into “sites of creative production, artistic experimentation, radical hospitality, archival stewardship and land cultivation.” At The Land School, public programming produced by creative partners-in-residence supports Rebuild's mission to expand proximity and access to cultural production on the South Side of Chicago. “What began as a reflection on our relationship to the land became a sonic experiment reflecting blackness in the present moment through hope, rage, protest, and resistance,” says Locks and Zarraga in the album’s co-written liner notes.
What we hear on Dawning is what Locks and D-Composed brought to the auditorium on April 11, 2026: a live performance meant to be “a sound experience that pulls you in and wrings you out.” The recorded document is hard to argue with. From sublime and consonant downbeat grooves to genuinely frightening, dissonant and anxious meltdowns—the six pieces that make up the album cover so much musical ground with such an expert touch that it can be difficult to remember that we’re listening to something that occurred all at once in the same room.
This is in spite of the fact that the album begins with a solitary cello calling out against only the sounds of the fully occupied room itself: gentle shuffling and small breaths, settling across the stereo spectrum of the opening track “Dawning (On Us)”—a slowly building theme augmented by Locks’ samples of previous D-Composed performances announces the musicians’ arrival in dramatic fashion.
Dialing the tension back, a looped 2-bar slow jam guides the listener into “We Stay Beginning,” the first vocal-forward piece on the album. Locks’ skills as a mic controller are on full display here in a similar way to his 2024 spoken beat masterpiece List of Demands, though here the performance is much further out, deconstructed dub-style à la his contributions to Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra.
"We stay in full bloooom!"
“Reflecting (On Us),” on the other hand, is unlike anything else in Locks’ sonic registry, and it’s here that the freshly tilled land of this collaboration yields its unique fruit. The track is a powerful showcase of the strings of D-Composed, and undoubtedly the centerpiece of the album. A dark and ennui-filled solo cello starts this ominous piece, followed by an ascendant droning intensity building as the remaining members of the ensemble enter. The surface noise crackles from Locks’ rig feel like actual flames atop a repeating heartbeat pulse. Loopers are playing and players are looping—it’s difficult to tell what is a live moment and what is a sample. Except that it’s all a live moment: even the samples are being blasted through the PA, gently reverberating in the early spring air on Dorchester Avenue, just outside of the building walls. The apex of dissonance hits as the lone human voice echoes in a repeating sampled phrase:
"It was though I stepped into a strange city—a city from which all people had fled"
The album closer, “Don’t Recede,” sends us off with a straightforward message of resilience. The tune’s nascent scraping and droning dissonance is reframed as a consonant experience almost immediately when the voice of singer Monique Golding, Locks’ longtime comrade in Black Monument Ensemble, enters. “Don’t bend to the noise” she sings, quietly understated, as the sound of the string ensemble is bolstered by Lock’s mysterious and percussive sampler work.
It’s the perfect summation of an afternoon of live performance—an exercise in contemplative, disjointed positivity, related to us here as a recorded document of an actual moment shared by a group of people in an intentionally purposed room. The spirit of the endeavor seems to suggest that the feeling of unity in that moment can radiate outward, transforming all it touches: a room, a neighborhood, a city, state, a country, a planet, a solar system, a universe.
"And seek wisdom, to make wise decisions"
CH0 0:00:01 VS--55CH0 0:00:01 is the latest dispatch from VS--55, the ongoing collaborative project led by Jonas Rönnberg, the Swedish electronic musician, producer, label founder, and artist also known as Varg2™. The band recorded the album while living at The Foundry, the experimental art space housed in a 19th-century armaments and military equipment factory on the edge of the French Pyrenees. The Foundry was created by artist Andrei Molodkin, and designed and run together with his life partner, architect Arianna Mondin. One of their core missions is to support highly experimental and avant-garde projects that could not be realised elsewhere. In this spirit, they supported the VS--55 music project with visual direction, design, and video production. The Russian-born artist, well known for his sculptures with crude oil and human blood, and who recently went viral for holding 46 million dollars' worth of artworks hostage in a 29-ton Swiss bank safe in exchange for the life of Julian Assange, is also the author of the CH0 0:00:01’s artworks. The entrance of The Foundry is marked by a large neon sign that flickers between "LAUGHTER" and "SLAUGHTER" — apt wordplay for the collective mood behind CH0 0:00:01, an abstract collection of vaporous fragments and humming frequencies, “anti-music” captured primarily through a deconstructed cinema organ, layered and sequenced to visceral effect, akin to stumbling upon absurd and unsettling surveillance footage. As heavy as the set scans, Rönnberg maintains, "it’s not that serious, it’s a mockery of society, the comedy of its absolute tragedy, a documentation of the time we're in right now, where culture is dead. Like my version of the Benny Hill song, when people die." During their two-month stay at The Foundry, Rönnberg, Simon and Anya naturally leaned into a kind of raw, and utilitarian, discipline. Life and work are coextensive at The Foundry: metal that was melted to shape military equipment was converted into an experimental art space, where disciplines collide to form a new language, as a weapon against the structures of power. From the past to present, the target is the same: the heads of people. It's not unusual for Rönnberg to be in this state of immersion, as he has, in essence, lived in his art for more than a decade. Sonically, however, the resulting project has no precedent in his catalog. Staggering in its starkness, there is very little instrumentation on CH0 0:00:01; moments of barely-there guitar, piano, and vocals churn under with the album’s central engine, a French cinema organ that the group propped next to air compressors and a Sony cassette dictaphone, all run into a giant club sound system. From the feedback, melodies and basslines emerged, giving the tracks an unpredictable howl and a haunting quality, as if they’ve been summoned. Opener "Laughter" establishes the tone, a disorienting buzz with echoes of, perhaps, slaughter. Rönnberg slept in a room called “the church”, which was filled with CIA torture documents. Voices permeate the mix; "Poison Tits" drifts between angelic whispers and reptilian growls, tracing the hypnotic pull of addiction. The song imagines heroin as a distant sun that is impossible to resist. Like insects drawn to a fatal light, people surrender themselves to its warmth, mistaking destruction for transcendence. Rising toward the promise of illumination, they find that the closer they come, the more completely they are consumed. In the end, the sun burns everything that dares to love it too deeply. "Chechny Crude Oil" follows a spoken word through corridors of sludge, and “Snyft, Mina Tårar Dom Rinner” buries Swedish lyrics beneath rattling percussion and erratic strums. Discordant noise often gives way to flashes of resonant beauty; the silvery shrieks of "F-02 Semtex" shift to a warmer airiness in "Avenue Maréchal Pt. 1". The industrial quakes of "Midnattsmord" ("Midnight Murder") topple into the serene static of “F-03 Dilute”. Cathartic standout "Crawler" sets rapid-fire whispers and sighs against a booming, punishing pulse. The lyrics are poetry that stalk in the shadows of capitalism, and the forces that guard it, tracing a world where control moves quietly, yet reaches everywhere. A slow march of distortion dissipates on closing track "F-04 Dissolve", leaving only plaintive keys adrift. "This is a soundtrack, I would say. And for what? I don't know," questions Rönnberg. "A humoristic disaster, and that's about it." He considers CH0 0:00:01 a documentation more so than as a direct musical expression, one that’s most powerful in its opacity, and needn't be fully decoded to be understood and felt.
Viewing-ADMIT IT'S KILLING YOU (AND LEAVE) (SPRINKLES' DEAD END) (Excerpt)
Viewing-MEDITATION ON WAGE LABOR AND THE DEATH OF THE ALBUM (SPRINKLES'UNPAID OVERTIME) (Excerpt)
Lamin Fofana takes inspiration from Aimé Césaire’s 1950 poetry collection Corps Perdu, translating its ideas into exploratory electronic music built from processed melodies, fragmented rhythms and sound. Developed through reading and listening sessions in Paris, Barcelona, Tunis and New York, the album forms part of Fofana’s wider engagement with Black Studies and writers including W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant and Suzanne Césaire. Its ten pieces follow Césaire’s imagery of scattering, upheaval and metamorphosis, connecting literature, sound and performance.
Naya Beat’s second installment in the acclaimed series, Select Remixes and Reworks 2, digs into South Asian rare groove, disco, and new wave, reimagining them for contemporary dance‑music culture.
Teal return with Love Comes Thru, the trio's nine-track debut album. Expanding their emotionally resonant blend of downtempo trip-pop, the record reaches into street soul, dub, and experimental grooves, marking a confident new chapter for the group. At its core, Love Comes Thru is a reflection on the quiet strength of love -- not through grand gestures, but through the steady presence that carries listeners through uncertainty, change, and connection. Written over the course of a year of bi-coastal collaboration, the album became a testament to the bond Teal share as artists, friends, and family. From the lush synth landscapes of "Aries Moon" to the footwork-inspired pulse of "Time Is Blind," the album explores themes of patience, vulnerability, longing, and intimacy. Standout singles "Kissing in a Dream" and the title track lean into left-field street soul, while stripped-back, 808-driven tracks like "Change Your Mind" and "Anomaly" demonstrate the power of restraint without sacrificing momentum. Building on the group's love of ambient improvisation, Love Comes Thru also features instrumental pieces with percussion by Brandon Valdivia (Mas Aya/Lido Pimienta). The album closes with the sensual "Bubbling," bringing the journey full circle with a reminder that love ultimately comes through in its most embodied, physical form. Love Comes Thru is presented in a deluxe, limited-edition matte-finish, double-embossed jacket with a printed inner sleeve. Track Listing: Disc 1 01. Aries Moon 00:40 listen 02. Time Is Blind 00:43 listen 03. Kissing In A Dream 00:33 listen 04. Change Your Mind 00:40 listen 05. Frog's Hollow 00:36 listen 06. Anomaly 01:01 listen 07. Slip Into Stillness 00:40 listen 08. Love Comes Thru 01:25 listen 09. Bubbling 01:00 listen - Teal return with Love Comes Thru, the trio's nine-track debut album. - Expanding their emotionally resonant blend of downtempo trip-pop, the record reaches into street soul, dub, and experimental grooves, marking a confident new chapter for the group. - Love Comes Thru is presented in a deluxe, limited-edition matte-finish, double-embossed jacket with a printed inner sleeve.
Originally created in 1987 as an image album for a luxury Sanyo air-conditioner, Get at the Wave stands as one of the most surprising and enduring works of Japanese ambient music. Recorded using synthesizers and natural field recordings, the album was designed to transport listeners far from the heat and noise of urban life — into open water, gentle wind, and unhurried space. Kokubo's mastery as an acoustic environment designer is present in every texture, blending electronic composition with an almost physical sense of atmosphere and place. Intimate, expansive, and quietly radical, Get at the Wave is an essential document of kankyō ongaku — and one that sounds more necessary than ever.
There are fewer great guitar trio records than you'd suspect. Guitar duo sessions are far more abundant, and these three players have all done their share of those. But the dynamics of a trio are more fickle. And when creating collaborative non-hierarchical music, maintaining a balance between three distinct voices is not easy. It requires rapt attention, a fearless approach to entering the unknown, and very good ears to do it successfully. Clearly, Connors, Vallera and Sharp display mastery of all of these conditions and then some. Recorded live at P.I.T. (Property Is Theft) in Brooklyn, When the Moon Is New documents the first meeting for the trio. Loren and Elliott, two of the best known experimenting guitarists on the planet, have a long shared history, dating back to the days of the legendary Chapel Arts Center in New Haven. Elliott appeared there regularly and often did some jamming with Loren on those occasions. Michael Vallera is from a different generation and came of age in a world where players like Loren, Ellliot, Keith Rowe and Derek Bailey had already blown apart any and all notions of the guitar's limitations. His work explores textures, colors and possibilities born from the knowledge that there are no limits to the guitar's sonic possibilities. Together, the three create a beautifully layered universe of sound, as wide open and cosmic as recent images from the Webb Space Telescope. Occasionally I think I can ID some complex pluckery as Sharp's, some blues-canted shimmer as Connor's or some mutli-valent sound sheet as Vallera's, but in truth, this is a excellent example of “fourth mind” creation in the Burroughsian sense. The individual parts played by each of artists combine themselves into something much larger than three commingled streams. There's a gigantic heft to the collective sound that will bowl you over in the best possible way. A truly magnificent record, When the Moon Is New, is an immersive and joyful example of experimental music at its most inviting and evocative. If it doesn't thrill you, I don't know what would. -Byron Coley, 2026
2025 repress; clear vinyl with white Hi-melt. "1998: Tortoise's third studio album TNT is released. In and out of print over the past decade we are happy to finally give everyone what they have been asking for - TNT on vinyl again! Pressed on high quality virgin vinyl, the two LPs are packaged in a deluxe old-style tip-on gatefold jacket fully replicating the original artwork and includes a download coupon for the first time!"
